CLAUDIA
I can feel it from them! They want to know who made us, what became of him. They have their rules, their idiotic rules!
They come to their room, enter.
INT. HOTEL ROOMS. NIGHT.
Louis closes the door behind him. Claudia paces.
LOUIS
Do you think I would let them harm you?
CLAUDIA
No, you would not, Louis. Danger hold you to me.
LOUIS
Love holds you to me. And we are in danger, not you.
CLAUDIA
Love?
She smiles at him. A strange, sad, adult smile.
CLAUDIA
You would leave me for Armand if he beckoned you.
LOUIS
Never.
CLAUDIA
He wants you as you want him. He's been waiting for you. He wants you
for a companion. He bides his time that place. he
finds them as dull and lifeless as we do.
LOUIS
That's not so.
CLAUDIA
Do you know what his soul said to me without saying a word? When he put me in that trance...
LOUIS
So you felt it too!
CLAUDIA
Let him go, he said. Let him go.
She touches his face.
CLAUDIA
Is that what I should do Louis? Let you go? My father? My lover? My Louis, who made me?
There are tears in her eyes. Louis lifts her up in his arms.
LOUIS
He can protect us, Claudia.
CLAUDIA
You really believe that?
EXT. DOLL-SHIP. NIGHT.
Claudia, staring at the dolls. We see Madeleine inside, painting a doll. She sees Claudia and smiles and waves.
INT. THEATRE. NIGHT.
Louis, sitting alone in the box, as the curtains draw back, to show
Santiago as death, as before. Louis takes advantage
of the darkness to slip away.
INT. ARMAND'S ROOM. NIGHT.
Armand opens the door to Louis' knock.
ARMAND
I was waiting for you...
LOUIS
Listen to me.
He follows Armand into the room.
LOUIS
Claudia is dear to me. My... daughter.
ARMAND
Your lover.
LOUIS
No, my beloved, my child.
ARMAND
If you say so. You are innocent.
LOUIS
I'm not innocent. But I'm afraid. She feels she's in danger from the others.
ARMAND
She is.
LOUIS
But why?
ARMAND
I could give you reasons. Her silence. Her youth. It's forbidden to make so young, so helpless, that cannot survive on its own.
LOUIS
Then blame the one who made her...
ARMAND
Did you kill this vampire who made you both? Is that why you won't say his name? Santiago thinks you did.
LOUIS
We want no quarrel with him.
ARMAND
It's already begun. If you want to save her, send her away.
LOUIS
Then I leave too.
Armand smiles.
ARMAND
So soon? Without any of those answers you so longed for?
LOUIS
You said there were none.
ARMAND
But you asked the wrong questions. Do you know how few vampires have
the stamina for immortality? How quickly they
perish of their own will.
LOUIS
We can do that?
ARMAND
You would never give up life. If the world were reduced to one empty
cell, on fragile candle, you stay alive and study it. You
see too clearly. You see too much.
LOUIS
That's what the one who made me said.
ARMAND
How he must have loved you.
Armand suddenly grips Louis close to him.
ARMAND
Louis, I need you more than he ever did. I need a link with this century.
The world changes. We do not. Therein lies the irony
that ultimately kills us. I need you to make contact with this age.
Louis laughs bitterly.
LOUIS
He? Don't you see? I'm not the spirit of any age! I'm at odds with everything
and always have been! I'm not even sure what I
am!
Armand smiles.
ARMAND
But Louis, that is the very spirit of your age. The heart of it. You fall from grace has been the fall of a century.
Louis is stunned.
LOUIS
And the vampires of the Theatre?
ARMAND
Like moths around the candle of the age. Decadent, useless. They can't
reflect anything. But you do. You reflect its broken
heart.
Louis is speechless.
ARMAND
Are these not the answers you came for?
LOUIS (SOFTLY)
Yes... My God...
ARMAND
A vampire with a human soul. An immortal with a mortal's passion. You
are beautiful, my friend. Lestat must have wept when
he made you --
LOUIS
Lestat! You knew Lestat!
ARMAND
Yes I knew him. Knew him well enough not to mourn his passing.
Armand stands. He takes Louis by the arm, leads him towards the back wall.
ARMAND
But you must go now. You must get her safely out of Paris.
He opens a hidden door in the wall.
ARMAND
No-one else knows of this door. When you knock you will find me waiting...
EXT. THEATRE DES VAMPIRES. NIGHT.
Louis, in the street outside, as the door closes behind him.
LOUIS (VO)
I feld a kind of peace at last. I had found the teacher which Lestat
could never, I knew now, have been. I knew knowledge
would never be withheld by Armand. It would pass through him as through
a pane of glass. And I knew Claudia must leave
me...
INT. HOTEL SUITE. NIGHT.
Louis enters. There is unfamiliar scent in the air, a doll sitting by the mirror. Louis looks in the mirror and sees --
MADELEINE, the doll-maker, resplendent in green taffeta, sitting like
a Madonna with Claudia on her lap. Claudia's
arms are wound round her neck. The contrast between mortal woman and
immortal child is plain.
CLAUDIA
Madeleine... Louis is shy.
Madeleine rises and comes towards Louis. She draws back the lace fringes
round her throat, so he can see the two
marks there. She says softly, dreamily.
MADELEINE
Drink.
Louis turns away. Claudia speaks, icy, from the bed.
CLAUDIA
Do it Louis. Because I cannot do it. I haven't the strength. You saw to that when you made me.
Louis turns to Madeleine.
LOUIS
You haven't the vaguest conception under God of what you ask!
MADELEINE
Au contraire, monsieur, I have.
Louis pushes her away. Claudia screams.
CLAUDIA
You have found your new companion, Louis! You will make me mine!
Louis grips Madeleine and shakes her.
LOUIS
How do we seem to you? Do you think us beautiful, magical, our white
skin, our fierce eyes? Drink, you ask me! Have you any
idea of the thing you will become?
CLAUDIA
Your evil is that you cannot be evil! And I will suffer for it no longer!
LOUIS
Don't make me, Claudia! I cannot do it!
CLAUDIA
Yet you could do it to me! Snatching me from my mother's hands like
two monsters in a fairy-tale! Couldn't you have waited?
Six more years and I would have had that shape! And now you weep! You
haven't tears enough for what you've done to me.
She points to Madeleine
CLAUDIA
You give her to me! Do this before you leave me!
She begins to weep, sobbing like a child.
CLAUDIA
Oh God! I love you still, that's the torment of it. But you know I must leave you Louis...
LOUIS
Yes...
CLAUDIA
And who will care for me my love, my dark angel, when you are gone?
Louis looks at Madeleine
LOUIS
You promise to care for her then?
MADELEINE
Yes...
LOUIS
And you know what you ask for?
She wraps her arms around Claudia.
MADELEINE
Yes.
LOUIS
What do you think she is, Madeleine? A doll?
MADELEINE
A child who can't die...
Her finger clutches a locket around her neck, Louis touches it, opens it.
THE LOCKET --
A picture of a young girl, Claudia's age, wistful, beautiful.
LOUIS (SOFTLY)
And the child who did die?
MADELEINE
My daughter...
Louis takes her chin in his hand, gently.
LOUIS
Look at the gaslight. Don't tke your eyes off it. You will be drained
to the point of death, but you must stay alive. Do you hear
me?
MADELEINE
Yes!
Louis pulls her to him and starts to drink her blood.
EXT. HOTEL BALCONY. LATER.
Louis on the balcony, weakened terribly. A breeze blows on the gauze curtains behind him, through which we see --
SILHOUETTES of Madeleine and Claudia. Madeleine her arms outstretched,
now a vampire, a long moan of pain coming
from her. Claudia comes through the curtains, alarmed.
CLAUDIA (WHISPER)
Louis!
Louis speaks without turning.
LOUIS
She is dying. It happened to you too, but your child's mind can't remember.
CLAUDIA
But if she dies...
LOUIS
It's only mortal death.
He turns to look at Claudia.
LOUIS
Bear me no ill will, my love. We are now even.
CLAUDIA
What do you mean?
LOUIS
What died tonight inside that room was not that woman. It will take
her many nights to die, perhaps yeaars. What has died in
that room tonight is the last vestige in me of what was human.
She takes his hand.
CLAUDIA
Yes father. At last. We are een.
He bends down and kisses her. He looks up, at the wafting curtains. he sees --
MANY VAMPIRE SHADOWS
Silhouetted, coming closer.
CLAUDIA
Looks up and sreams.
THE CURTAINS
Are ripped aside. The vampires of the Theatre surge through.
ESTELLE
Time for justice, little one.
The vampires close on them as Louis struggles, Claudia's scream pierces the night air.
INT. CORRIDOR OF THEATRE DES VAMPIRES. NIGHT.
In a press of vampires, Louis, Claudia and Madeleine are forced down the dark corridor. Into -
THE BALLROOM
Vampire chaos, as they are dragged through. Louis struggling like a demon.
LOUIS
Armand! Get me Armand! he wouldn't countenance this -
SANTIAGO
You can make no demands here! Buffoon! Bastard -
Santiago strikes Louis to the ground. As he struggles to his feet, he
sees the vampires part around a figure coming
through. He gasps at the sight of --
LESTAT
Dressed beautifully, but horribly scarred now, from the fire as well
as the earlier stabbing. Lestat is confused, ancient,
teetering, reaching for Santiago's shoulder to steady himself.
LESTAT
Louis...
SANTIAGO
Is he the one?
Lestat shakes his head.
LESTAT
No, the child. The child was the one...
SANTIAGO
All the murderers!!!
LOUIS
You are alive, Lestat! It can't be murder! Tell them how you treated us...
Lestat reaches out to Louis.
LESTAT
No... You come back to me Louis...
LOUIS
Are you mad????
ESTELLE
The sentence is death! To all of them!!!
LESTAT
Only the girl - it was the girl -
The sound of something being dragged through the crowd. Horrible echoing, scraping -
Lestat grips Santiago.
LESTAT
You promised me - I could take him back to New Orleans - Louis - there's
something I must tell you - about that night - that
night I met you -
He stares around him, confused. The scraping gets louder.
LOUIS
You let her go, Lestat - you let her free - and I'll come back with you -
Santiago grabs Louis by the neck.
SANTIAGO
Death for the others. For you eternity in a box -
We see now what caused the scraping. A huge metal coffin being dragged through the vampires. Claudia screams.
SANTIAGO
Walled in a dungeon. Your only company will be your screams... Perhaps it will take centuries...
The vampires grap Louis. They force him towards the coffin. Lestat struggles with them.
LESTAT
He's coming home with me - you promised -
SANTIAGO (LAUGHING)
We promised nothing!
Louis struggles fiercely as he is forced into the coffin. Claudia weeps.
LOUIS
They've fooled you, Lestat! You must reach Armand! Armand has the power!
Louis, struggling in the coffin. Then the lid is forced down, huge locks closed over it.
INT. COFFIN.
Louis, in the smallest imaginable space. Beating his forehead against the metal.
EXT. COFFIN.
Claudia, throwing herself on the coffin, crying. She is dragged away.
Vampire hands drag the coffin across the stone
floor.
INT. COFFIN.
Louis, forehead pouring with blood, being thrown this way and that.
The coffin is liften, upside down, Louis' head
crases off the floor.
EXT. COFFIN.
Is thrust into a niche in the wall. Bricks being placed over, mortar trowelled on.
INT. COFFIN.
Louis upside down. Sounds of bricks and mortar. Then terrifying, unearthly
scream pierces the coffin, striking to his
very soul.
LOUIS
Claudia!!!!!
He loses consciousness.
BLACKNESS.